


Doubting, Dreaming

by icarus_chained



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Love, Hope, Introspection, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Prompt Fic, Self-Acceptance, Touch-Starved, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 16:18:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5381816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sole touches him a lot. Nothing weird, nothing funny. Just ... constant. Nick can't help but notice, and consider what it means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doubting, Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> Again, for a [prompt](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/6099.html?thread=16166867#t16166867) on the kink meme. I really think I like Nick. And this pair. Heh.

Sole touches him. A lot. Nick can't help but notice that.

Oh, it's nothin' weird. It's not like the guy is feelin' him up or anything. All Sole does is ... pat him on the arm, ya know, or lean against a wall beside him, shoulder to shoulder. Normal things. Friendly things. Maybe sometimes a little more than that. There've been a couple of nights out here where Sole dozed off beside him, wedged in against Nick's side if they don't exactly have any facilities, stretched out with his head pillowed on Nick's legs otherwise. It's probably lucky Nick's legs are mostly intact. He can't imagine they'd be very comfortable otherwise. Hell, he doesn't imagine they're very comfortable as it stands. Sole never seems to mind.

It's not weird. Or it shouldn't be, at least. There's nothing funny in it. It's just that ... People don't tend to touch Nick much. Not, ya know, consistently. Not often, not casual. Not the way Sole does. Nick weirds people out. It's understandable. He's a half-made man these days, a lump of decaying metal and plastic that can pass for a sick ghoul on bad days. He's all metal and edges and angles, part-decayed, a damaged facsimile of a human. He's not the sort of thing you buddy up to. Not physically, anyway. People respect him, now, they accept him and sometimes even like him, but they don't _touch_ him. Not like this. Not like Sole.

People don't lean against him casually in the street. They don't nudge his metal arm playfully, a gentle sock to the shoulder to draw his attention. They don't slump exhaustedly down beside him, lean on him like he's the only safe thing for miles. They don't rest their heads against his shoulder while they're dozing gently. They don't wriggle aggravatedly downwards in attempts to get comfortable, don't drop their heads onto his thigh with a thump and a "You don't mind, do you? I really need to catch some zees". They don't use him for handy pillows in flop houses and camp sites. They don't wake up and blink blearily up at his damaged face, and then grin sheepishly at him in embarrassment for having dozed off in his lap. They don't ... They don't do these things. No one does these things. No one except Sole.

Nick doesn't know how to feel about it. Well. He knows how he _feels_ about, he just doesn't know how he _should_. He has a feeling that the reactions he's having aren't the ones he's supposed to have. He has this idea that the reactions he has are probably supposed to be off-limits to things like him.

He feels warm, is the thing. He feels _touched_. Hah! But there's a reason people say it that way, isn't there. There's a reason humans phrase the feeling that way. Touch matters. It always has. Nick has memories of that. They're not his, they belong to someone else, but he remembers them all the same. He knows what touch means, and why he craves it even when he's made of metal and plastic and wires. He knows what it feels like to be touched, to be leaned against, to be accepted physically after going so long without. He knows what it does to him.

He knows why a warm, sleepy arm around his waist makes him feel like his chest is on fire. He knows why a slack, trusting face and a stream of drool against his knee makes the fingers of his metal hand ache with phantom pains. He knows why a sheepish grin, just for him, makes him want to clear the entire Commonwealth out by himself, just to keep it safe. He knows. He does. He knows the name for what he's feeling. He knows the word.

It's a strange thing to feel, over something so simple. It's something he was never designed to feel. He's nearly sure about that. This hadn't been in the design specs. The Institute aren't the kind of people to want this sort of thing out of their slave labour. Part of him wonders if that's why they dumped him. If he maybe took to those memories they gave him, that life he has in his head, just that little bit better than they planned. He knows what love is supposed to feel like. He knows what it's like to be touched. Even if he knows those memories belong to someone else, he still has them. He still knows. He still wants. The thing he is now, the body he has, they don't lend well to achieving a want like that. That never stopped him from wanting it anyway. For all it was useless, for all it hurt, it never stopped him wanting.

It doesn't stop him keeping it now that he has it, either. It doesn't stop him from ... from keeping Sole. From touching him, from socking him gently in the shoulder, from leaning beside him right on back. It doesn't stop him from resting a protective arm around that sleeping figure, laid out beside him and drooling gently on his knee. It doesn't stop him from looking at it, the raw, exposed fingers of his metal hand laid protectively over a human shoulder, and thinking that maybe, just maybe, they might belong there. That maybe he can have this, even though he's not supposed to. Sole doesn't mind. Sole never has. Sole never seems to care that the pillow he's resting on is made of metal and plastic, all angles and decay. Sole just wriggles around until he's comfortable, and sighs as he leans into Nick like he's the only safe thing for miles.

It makes Nick's fingers ache. There aren't even any sensors there anymore. They were all ripped away with the flesh of that arm. His metal hand doesn't feel much of anything these days. It's something the bit of Nick that remembers being human interprets as a mobile bunch of scar tissue, or a particularly connected prosthetic limb. It's part of him, it moves and it acts, but it doesn't feel. Not anymore. It shouldn't, anyway.

He knows it doesn't. Not really. It's a phantom pain, a way for him to feel the thing in his chest, the thing he doesn't dare name, without having to _feel_ it. It's a way to make the feeling external, a little quirk of a synthetic brain and a human mind, trying to understand something they were never supposed to experience. He puts it in that hand, that so-visible expression of what he is, so that he knows he shouldn't have it, and so that he gets to keep it anyway. He makes that exposed part of himself, that inert machine, into the part that feels. It's a way to accept it, he thinks. It's a way to make it feel okay. A way to make it feel right.

Because it is right. It is okay. Every time he wants to think otherwise, to remember what he is and why so many people don't want to touch him, he looks down at Sole. He looks at the man curled trustingly around him, looks at the guy who touches him casually and constantly and without a single thought, and he knows that it's okay. Sole thinks so, anyway. Sole obviously thinks there's nothing wrong with it. Sole's the one he wants. Sole's the one he ... the one he feels that word for, the one he l- _loves_. If Sole doesn't mind it, then it's okay. Sole's the one that matters. Sole's the one that touched him first. 

Sole's the one that touches him still. Always. A lot. Sole's the one that's still here, still leaning into Nick, still smiling up at him. Sole's the one who maybe knows, maybe understands what it is that Nick's feeling. Maybe sees it in his face. Sole's the one who's staying anyway. 

That's enough, isn't it? That makes it okay. Nick's a half-made man, a lump of decaying plastic and metal, but that's _okay_. That doesn't mean he can't feel things. It doesn't mean he can't want, and it doesn't mean he can't have. There's a man beside him who touches him despite it. There's a man beside him who leans into him anyway. That's enough. It's more than enough. It's everything.

"Deep into that darkness peering," he says to himself again. He smiles faintly, and traces the shell of Sole's ear gently with his intact hand. Sole stirs, a little, but doesn't wake. It's quiet tonight. He doesn't need to. Nick's okay with that. He continues the quote, finishes it quietly to himself for the first time in quite a while. The first part had always seemed appropriate, always seemed a part of his life. It's the second part that he's only just starting to understand.

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing ... doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before."


End file.
